When The Last Leaf Falls
by Nea's world
Summary: An elf who lost his love has found her again in our time, but she's come back as a human, with all mortals' problems. This is an angsty look into his thoughts as he ponders what to do.


She turned her head slightly to the side, her light blue eyes looking curiously over her shoulder. She looked in my direction, her eyes searching, but she didn't see me.

Still, that she had looked was enough. In some part of her, this young being before me, she still knew me.

She is walking through this little wooded area with her roommate. She's in college. A private university, actually, and apparently doing fairly well, considering the difficulty of doing well here verses somewhere else. She is still a quiet one, and her eyes soak up the world around her as if she were starved for it, an odd thing for her kind now.

_Do you still hear the trees? Do they sing to you, their songs of summer and eternal days? Do you hear the leaves whisper of summer laughter? Or have they gone silent for you, as they have for me? Oh, love…_

She brushes at a wisp or hair which was dangling near her lips, lifting it over her ear in an absent attempt to keep it back. I can remember her doing that so many times before a sharp ache pierces me. Her hair is pulled back, today, in a 'ponytail'. Odd name. It's still of sunshine, though darker than when I knew her. The ends catch the light, split for the harsh treatment it receives in this place, for the lack of our things to tend to it properly. Still, she's kept it long, and it still has that faint wave near the ends.

I can feel the silken weight of her hair in my hands, can feel the soft glide of a strand as I wrap it around my finger before tucking it behind her ear…

Soft laughter escapes her, making my breath catch in my throat. Despite her years here, her laugh is still so gentle, so sweet, compared to the abrupt braying of her friend, her roommate. A smile is turning the lips I've known so well, but were I to touch them now, they would not be the same. She bites her lower lip, worries it, plays with it, absently nibbles when worried or bored.

Besides, she would not know me, her lips would no longer melt eagerly to mine… For though I have always known her, she does not know me.

Another glance over her shoulder, a searching look to the part of the woods I stand within. She does not _consciously_ know me, but she knows me, and can still sense me. She shakes her head ever so slightly, shaking the feeling of my presence away, and I battle with the ripping within my soul.

It wouldn't do for her to know me. It wouldn't do for this woman child to find me, for what would happen then? My heart was breaking with every instant I saw her, saw her steps had become less graceful, though traces of the one I knew remained in nearly every movement. Each hint of what had been fractured my already battered heart a little more…

It stopped again as she bent to retrieve a red leaf from the ground. She studies it with her head tilted, a faint smile upon her lips as she absently inserts comments to the babble her roommate keeps up incessantly. Her attention is on the leaf, tracing the veins, the slight blending of orange at the leaf's tips. With a shudder she flicks a tiny spider from the leaf. She then runs the fingers of her free hand over the lobes, her eyes softening to feel it still has some hint of life to make it malleable. Holding the stem between two fingers she lets her hand drop to her side, absently twirling it as they walk on, flashes of red and silver.

_Do you remember? Or is this but a moment in your new life? Do you recall how you used to love watching the leaves change? How you would drag me out to see them, would make me wait with you until all the leaves had changed? How you would endeavor to count the leaves as they fell, until there was but one remaining in the barren branches above us? How you would then look at me with a gentle laugh, would add that leaf to your count, and then allow me to distract you into forgetting the leaf, into missing its final descent before we had to return to the forest of our birth? Do you know you did that every time we watched it happen, because you said the only sad thing was to see the last leaf fall? Do you recall saying that one leaf was like the death of a season, and so not worth watching, despite your joy for the colors? Do you remember…_

_No. There is no way you could remember that which is seared into my soul. It is no doubt engrained in yours, as well, but you don't remember… you merely feel attracted to these leaves, these colors, to the crunching sound it makes beneath your feet. I used to laugh at you for making so much noise when you needn't ever walk so heavily upon the earth. But you don't remember. You don't remember jumping on me, knocking me to the ground and rolling through the russet leaves with me until neither were aware of the argument as the wind and stars smiled upon us, at peace within each other. You don't remember. You don't remember arguing with me that the cycle was an encouraging thing, a sign of things to come—of rebirth and regrowth. You don't remember me shaking my head at you, preferring the unchanging green leaves of our wood, the ones I was named after. You don't remember it is a fitting name for an elf, especially one of those born among wood-elves. You don't remember anything of us. You don't remember me._

They return to their campus, to their dorm, but I remain in the woods. It yet calls to her, on some level. She probably chalks it up to the hectic life she now lives, to needing a moment at peace from time to time. She will return here, and I can see her again, until I decide what I am to do.

I drop from my place in the trees, the ground welcoming me as I land silently among the leaves. Unbidden, I find myself reaching for one of the crimson leaves at my feet. _You always loved the red ones._ Looking back towards their campus, I see her lift her fingers in a farewell to her roommate as they go down separate paths. She pauses for a moment, looking up at the large tree beside her. With a faint, self-conscious smile she reaches out to feel the bark. _Do you hear anything when you touch them? Or is it just rough life beneath your fingers?_ She withdraws, looking absently at her hand, twirling the leaf for a moment more. She pulls a paperback book from one of the large pockets in her green jacket and gently places the leaf inside.

_Do you know how often I have been struck through the heart by coming across leaves you have saved in that way? How centuries after your… after you left I would sit to read a book and find a leaf tucked away within the pages? Do you know how many times such little things broke my heart?_

The book has been tucked away once more, and she steps out from under the trees, her gaze lowering. Her eyes were hurt by the sudden light, I knew that. Just as I knew her sharp eyes were nothing more than the work of other men in this world, for on their own, her eyes were focused on the last time she saw me, the world going dark around her. My love had waited too long, waited for me to arrive when she should have just let go. And now, because of her dalliance, her soul held pieces of her death with it, narrowing the vision of her new forms, giving them pain those around her could do nothing about.

I head off through the trees, wrapping my arms around myself. This time is so cold, so barren. The leaves have mostly fallen—just a few trees have any leaves at all. Once upon a time, ages ago, she and I would leave our home because she liked to watch the leaves change colors, and they would not in our home woods. She was fascinated by the leaves, so I indulged her, seeing no harm in letting her watch for a few weeks every few years.

She knew I was merely indulging her desire, and she would smile gently at me and take my hand as we walked beneath the raining leaves. Her eyes would sparkle with love and happiness, and though I found her fascination somewhat morbid, I could not deny her. I was never able to deny her anything that she so loved… as long as it did not put her in harm's way. She had never pushed me when I put my foot down, never pressed when I denied her, knowing that I only refused because I feared for her. She would just tilt her head to the side, study my eyes, and then nod before sliding into my arms as if there had never been a moment of conflict.

For so many years there had not even been those moments between us. All moments had come to an end, save those I was caused by finding some memory of her locked away, hiding to catch me unawares, to break my heart again.

It's rather funny, really. Now she enjoys reading stories of our time, of our people, though she doesn't believe a word of it. She can even speak some elvish, thanks to the movies recently out about the quest to destroy the ring. Of all there is that she could believe, she believes that elves can die of a broken heart.

Am I not an elf?

And has my heart not broken at least daily since she left me?

Why, then, do I live?

How can it be, if I am to have died of a broken heart, that I yet walk this earth, and have found her once more?

Finding her has been nearly as painful as loosing her. Hope was… Hope. Hope had been life for the years it took me to find her once we knew she was again upon this earth. But now she is found, I have watched her… and hope is gone.

She doesn't know me. She doesn't even know herself.

And she never will. Even if I were to tell her everything, she would never believe me, never think it could be true.

It's funny.

'Elves can die of a broken heart.' Yet my heart is broken. I yet live.

I lived to go on the quest she knows so much about, has read about and watched. I've heard her and her roommate discussing things from the movies that don't go with the books, heard them discussing which version of me was most likely true. Well, love, they both are. Or were. During the quest I showed them nothing but laughter, for it was a bright period in my darkness, at least until the end. A bitter end it was, too. Sauron with all his might couldn't kill one warrior elf who wanted to die, but wasn't strong enough to end things himself.

After that I grew more grave. The world around me was dying and I was not. Did someone tell the director that? Did he just guess? Did he think the idea of a laughing elf as one of the walkers wouldn't draw as many people to his creation as a solemn warrior would?

I don't know, and I don't really care. I am far too old and tired to waste my time thinking of the ways of mortals, save in her case.

She should never have been reborn a mortal.

Of course, she should never have died, never have left me even as I held her tightly within my arms. Until that moment, the most painful thing I had known was to have a poisoned arrow sink within my chest, to see my love leaning over me with tears in her beautiful eyes as she begged me to fight the poison, fight the darkness that reached to me.

I could never deny her anything.

As the stars filter down to embrace me, I hear the trees murmur lightly. They welcome me, having heard stories of us from generations long sense past. They ask me to tell them of the world before.

With a sigh, I shake my head. To tell them that the air was once clean, the water pure, and people were not swarming about the land and destroying the world would be of no good use for them. It is enough that I know, that I know these trees, which men would call old and tall, strong, are nothing but saplings who are already dying. What good would it do to tell them that they—who see themselves as strong and tall—are really just living monuments to the world's fall?

To appease them I lightly sing a song, the words finding their way from my throat before I realize what they are to be. I finish with the first verse, shaking my head at myself. She used to sing it as we walked together beneath the bows of those strong trees of our home.

Why must I torture myself so?

There was nothing to be done when she died, nothing I could do which I did not, nothing we could have done differently without knowing what would happen ahead of time… which we could not. In the ways of the world we were mere children, unknowing of that we would have needed to know to have prevented that instant which had separated us.

I turn my head, wondering at the same moment why I did so, but soon I knew. She was coming. The woods had called to her… or perhaps I had. In some hidden recess of her forgotten self, she could yet be drawn to me.

In the same way I was drawn to her.

Still, I slipped out of sight. Not a hard feat for one of the firstborn to vanish from mortal vision.

It hadn't always been so perfect between my love and I. When we first met, hardly a civil moment passed between us, though surface appearances were always above reproach. Considering our parents, there had been no choice in that.

I had scoffed for millennia about the idea of true soul mates. To love another was one thing, and totally understandable. But to be a part of someone, so deeply a part of them that it hurts to so much as breathe when they are not around… that I didn't believe. My father would smile indulgently at me and roll his eyes to the stars when I said or did anything in my youthful stupidity that informed him of that lack of belief.

Everything had changed.

Just _changed_ one day. I was with her, only we suddenly weren't fighting, weren't angry, weren't bitter… we just were. There was nothing to say, nothing to _do_ except accept it. We did. Without a word, we did.

I know it stunned our friends when we returned to the halls that evening. Our parents—perhaps from some sadistic pleasure or perchance true wisdom—had been sending us places together for years, not seeming to grasp what our friends knew, or thought they knew. We couldn't stand each other.

Until that day.

We rode back on my horse together, though there was nothing wrong with hers. We simply couldn't bear to be apart so soon…

From there we never spoke harshly to each other, for to hurt the other was to hurt ourselves, foolish as well as painful. It amazes me still when I remember feeling her within me, feeling her silent laughter as our friends looked at us in utter shock, their jaws nearly dropping open as she allowed me to help her down though she didn't need assistance. Just an excuse to hold her for a moment, to touch her an instant longer. To be touched.

Now the stars draped over her, lighting without lingering, without illuminating. I kept pace with her silently, out of sight should she bother to look my way, and I took in all that made her different from how she once was.

She lifted her face to the stars, her lips parting as she observed them with a faint smile. She let her neck loll as she used to, as if disconnected from her shoulders, laxly going wherever the dictates of her motion allowed. Once I had laughed at her for it, the free enjoyment of her body's movement, but laughter wasn't caught in my throat any longer.

It was my broken heart there, now.

I could picture her doing that so many times, but also I could see her head lolling to the side after our bodies were united, after the firestorm calmed. Always then a faint, utterly content smile would touch her lips, before she would roll her head to face me, her hand reaching over to curve around my neck as she drew me down for a kiss before her eyes would cease to focus on me as she slipped into dreams as her body rested against mine.

I could also see one time when her head's lax movement had nothing to do with her relaxed approach to the world, to life, but rather to her own inability to lift it any longer. I had held her head up then, held it as her eyes went glassy… but not to her dreams. She left then, left as I held onto her, as I cradled her in my arms, my heart shattering into a thousand sharp fragments that have never stopped cutting me.

_You don't remember me._

Her head turned in my direction, and then sharply to the ground before swiveling to the trees above us. The pulse in her neck beat faster, her breath escaping in small plumes to caress the air more rapidly than before. She wrapped her left arm around her middle, her right rising after a few minutes to her neck below her left ear.

_Yet you carry some of my love within you. For how else would you feel the pain of her death, however minutely?_

She was often ill, now that she looked the age my love had when she was killed. It was but a remnant, a moment from her life before being captured for an instant or two, sending pain through her abdomen and from the place on her neck through which the deadly poison had entered my love, but she could do nothing to change it.

I could ease that pain. I could draw it away from the soul as I once had for the body, absorb it into myself. Then she could go on. She could live a normal, human life here. She could find some male to love who loved her…

The thought did not fill me with jealousy, nor with fear for loosing her. Merely pain.

I would never hold my loved one again. I could walk behind her now, take her in my arms, and it would not be her, but some woman child mortal who now held her soul. Yes, that soul was my mate, was part of me… but this being was not.

Her thumb rubbed in the hollow behind her jaw, seeking to ease pain the doctors could never understand, and never would be able to ease. I could. I had done it for my love when I found her that night the world died for me. She had held on too long so we would have one moment left together, one moment to let our eyes meet, to both know we might never meet again. I could ease this one's pain.

But did I dare?

I could help her, I could release her soul from the torment it held in its memory of our parting, could let her go on in this life and perhaps others—I knew little about the way of mortal souls after death… and was her soul of mortal kind now?

I could help her…

Yet it would be another devastation to live through. I had lost her once… could I touch her, look into her eyes… and see nothing? Nothing save my own reflection, the desire I had to have her know _me_ as I knew her? Could I really touch her, knowing she felt nothing from it save perhaps the faintest flicker which her soul would provide while my very being was being wrenched apart because she didn't know me? How could I find my way back onto solid ground after looking into her eyes, seeing the soul which was supposed to be forever near mine had little control over the body it now inhabited? What would happen to me when I touched her, and it wasn't really her I touched? Wasn't her eyes I looked into? Wasn't her smile I saw?

Fear is a bitter thing for one who has spent so long as such a warrior as I am. I have fought in wars this world has long since forgotten, myths turned into naught but a fragmented dream held only in ancient texts none understand, and yet I fear this child for she has the ability to destroy me where all my grief has not. If she were to but turn from me, would I remain? Or would the broken heart finally take me?

It is a funny thing, indeed. As grotesque masks may laugh at cruel jokes, it was funny. I feared that which I had longed for and dreamed of for so long… because I had had _hope_ if but for an instant, that I could have my love once more. I feared to die, and having the soul I longed for so desperately turn aside could possibly destroy me once and for all.

In thousands of years, I would wish for death again, I've no doubt. I would hope a war would break out so I could go fight, knowing there would be no wars in the undying lands, even if the humans destroyed the world that had nurtured and held us all for so long.

The friends that had jested about my weakness for her had gone silent when she died, their envy turned to fear, no longer wishing to find their own soul mates for fear the same fate that had brought me to my knees would befall them. Now they waited for me to return with her, with my love… but I couldn't.

Perhaps some would be content to spend a human life with their love after so long of being apart, but this child would never be my love. She was unable to recall me, and to know me would take much longer than her form was given. Each life following—assuming mortals are reborn—would be short, and how long could I chase her soul, only to end up in the same fashion every time? How could anyone expect me to live through the ages, finding her soul was again on the earth, finding her, coaxing her to love me, only to spend but a handful of years with her before she died again? If a broken heart had not taken me after millennia of loving her only to lose her when I least expected it—and what elf would?—how could I possibly be unable to survive her death over and over again?

I would live, most likely, but I would grow even more weary of life than I now was.

She was still panicking, her hand pressed hard against the side of her neck, her arm clenched around her middle as she cast her eyes around, trying to understand why she was filled with such fear she couldn't find any basis for.

I knew why she feared. My love had been attacked in the forest at night, when assistance was too far to be of aid. I had felt her pain from the attack, from the spider, and had arrived only in time to lift her into my arms and feel the beginning fissures rock my heart as her soul began to slip away, my left arm around her, lifting her, my right hand reaching around to help hold her head up, trying to still the slowing flow of blood escaping her wound even as I felt numbness settling through her, and so through me.

_Very well, love._

I moved forward, getting quite close before she sensed me behind her and spun around. Her blue eyes widened, and all the differences hit me hard. No, this was not my love, though they held the same soul. The surprise in her eyes faded to awe. After all, I was no doubt the first elf she had ever seen, and the only one she was likely to. I had no illusions about what she saw—in her eyes I was the starlight bound into a form of beauty beyond her imaginings. Those stars bathed me silver, my face calm and serene in appearance despite my torment. Her eyes flittered over my face, as if to find some proof I existed, or to imprint me on her memory. A faint frown touched her brow when she saw my ears, her eyes lifting to mine again, confusion prominent.

As I stepped closer her breath caught, her eyes widening with a flicker of fear that caused all the fragments in me to grind a bit harder, slicing deeper than in recent years. At least she didn't run. In fact, her feet seemed rooted as I paused but a breath away. I murmured something to sooth her, absently aware I was speaking elvish and that the one before me knew but a few words.

She once teased me about using elvish around her when we were alone, since most elves spoke the common tongue in our wood. _But you don't know that, do you?_

I reached out, placing my left hand over hers, which was near her waist. She stiffened slightly, her mouth opening slightly to protest. I looked up again, and she closed her mouth without speaking. Since her right hand had fallen upon turning to see me, the way was clear for me to put my hand on her neck, upon the place where that which had taken her from me had entered her body, my thumb sliding along that hollow lightly, aching to hold my love in truth—for this being knew me not, and her skin wasn't as soft, her form not melting to my light caress as my love would have with but a glance.

Once my hand was in place, her eyes lost their wideness, blinking a few times as confusion returned, along with a faint flicker of something that was nearly memory. Seeing it die into nothingness was worse than anything else I had seen in these last few days. Taking a rather shattered breath, I concentrated on the ancient wounds, drawing the memory of pain from her, taking the suffering from her soul, calming her heart down beyond normal human limits.

For an instant my love was there, but for the second time I saw her life escape her eyes, and all that remained was the human who held her soul. When the pain would not return I moved my hand up slightly, brushing a strand of less than elven-soft hair back from her eyes before stepping back.

Those eyes looked at me, and she blinked, then turned her head to the side. Her pulse sped up slightly, returning to normal, and she backed up a few steps, before turning to leave. At the edge of the wood she looked back, her head cocked slightly as she lifted her hand to her neck, feeling my touch yet lingering there.

In that moment, I knew that she would not forget me, though her memory now was human. She would always remember the odd being who had appeared one evening and drawn her pain from her, would remember the way the stars had clung to his hair and eyes. She would remember how something within her caused him pain so intense she could nearly taste it for an instant, how she felt that she wasn't what she was meant to be, that he had turned from her for that… But she would remember me as but a dream, something to be shaken off or laughed lightly about but never shared with someone. Perhaps, she would think me—as I had drawn her ghost pain away—as her guardian angel. Nothing more, nothing else.

Yes, she would remember me, but never as I wished she would remember me.

Slowly she turned and continued out of the wood, away from me, away from the song of the trees she very likely could no longer hear.

_Farewell, child. May your life be better from here._

The pain from my love's death should never trouble her again, no matter if she was reborn or not.

As for me, my broken heart and I would be bleeding all the way back to the undying lands, to remain there until this weariness overwhelms me and my soul decides slumber is the only way to go. Never would I see that faint sparkle of my love again.

_Goodbye, my love. _

_Forever._

The last leaf fell, silently crashing to the ground.


End file.
